How Child Protective Services (CPS) came to be in the United States

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Child Protective Services (CPS)is the name of a
government agency in many states of the United
States responsible for providing child
protection, which includes responding to reports
of child abuse or neglect. Some states use other
names, List of Other Names and Acronyms for
CPS Department of Children and Families
DCF Department of Children and Family Services
DCFS Department of Social Services
DSS Department of Human Services DHS Department
of Child Safety DCS Department of Child
Services - DCS Department of Human Resources-
DHR History In 1690, in America, there were
criminal court cases involving child abuse. In
1692 the states and municipalities identified
care for abused and neglected children as the
responsibility of local government and private
institutions.  
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In 1696, The Kingdom of England first used the
legal principle which gave the royal crown care
of "charities, infants, idiots, and lunatics
returned to the chancery." This principle has
been identified as the statutory basis for U.S.
governmental intervention in families' child
rearing practices. In 1825, the states enacted
laws giving social-welfare agencies the right to
remove neglected children from their parents and
from the streets. These children were placed in
orphanages and with other families. In 1835,
the Humane Society founded the National
Federation of Child Rescue agencies to
investigate child maltreatment. In the late-19th
century, private child protection agencies 
modeled after existing animal protection
organizations  developed to investigate reports
of child maltreatment, present cases in court and
advocate for child welfare legislation. In
1853, the Children's Aid Society was founded in
response to the problem of orphaned or abandoned
children living in New York City.5 Rather than
allow these children to become institutionalized
or continue to live on the streets, the children
were placed in the first foster homes,
typically with the intention of helping these
families work their farms as slave labor.
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In 1874, the first case of child abuse was
criminally prosecuted in what has come to be
known as the "case of Mary Ellen." Outrage over
this case started an organized effort against
child maltreatment. In 1909, President Theodore
Roosevelt convened the White House Conference on
Child Dependency, which created a publicly funded
volunteer organization to "establish and
publicize standards of child care. By 1926, 18
states had some version of county child welfare
boards whose purpose was to coordinate public and
private child related work. Issues of abuse and
neglect were addressed in the Social Security
Act in 1930, which provided funding for
intervention for neglected and dependent
children in danger of becoming delinquent.  In
1912, the federal Children's Bureau was
established with a mandate that included services
related to child maltreatment. In 1958,
amendments to the Social Security Act mandated
that states fund child protection efforts.
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In 1962, professional and media interest in child
maltreatment was sparked by the publication of C.
Henry Kempe and associates' "The battered child
syndrome" in JAMA. By the mid-1960s, in response
to public concern that resulted from this
article, 49 U.S. states passed child-abuse
reporting laws. In 1974, these efforts by the
states culminated in the passage of the
federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act 
providing federal funding for wide-ranging
federal and state child-maltreatment research and
services.  In 1980, Congress passed the first
comprehensive federal child protective services
act, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare
Act of 1980 which focused on family preservation
efforts to help keep families together and
children out of foster care or other out-of-home
placement options. Partly funded by the federal
government, Child Protective Services (CPS)
agencies were first established in response to
the 1974 CAPTA which mandated that all states
establish procedures to investigate suspected
incidents of child maltreatment.
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In the 1940s and 1950s, due to improved
technology in diagnostic radiology, the medical
profession began to take notice of what they
believed to be intentional injuries, the
so-called "Shaken Baby Syndrome."  In 1961, C.
Henry Kempe began to further research this issue,
eventually identifying and coining the
term battered child syndrome.  In 1973,
Congress took the first steps toward enacting
federal legislature to address the issues of
poverty and minorities. The Child Abuse
Prevention and Treatment Act was passed in 1974,
which required states "to prevent, identify and
treat child abuse and neglect. Shortly
thereafter, in 1978, the Indian Child Welfare
Act (ICWA) was passed in response to attempts to
destroy the Native Americans by taking large
numbers of Native American children, separating
them from their tribes and placed in foster care
or sending them to far away schools where they
were maltreated.  In 1980, the Adoption
Assistance and Child Welfare Act was introduced
as a way to manage the high numbers of children
in placement.
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Although this legislation addressed some of the
complaints from earlier pieces of legislation
around destroying due process for parents, these
changes were not designed to alleviate the high
numbers of children in placement or continuing
delays in permanence. This led to the
introduction of the home visitation models, which
provided funding to private agencies to force
parents into intensive services in cases where
the children were not favorable on the adoption
market. All of these policies led up to the
1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), much
of which guides current practice. Changes in the
Adoptions and Safe Families Act showed an
interest in cosmetically shifting the emphasis
towards children's health and safety concerns and
away from a policy of reuniting children with
their birth parents without regard to prior
abusiveness. This law requires counties to
provide "reasonable efforts" to preserve or
reunify families, but required that states move
to terminate parental rights for children who had
been in foster care for 15 out of the last 22
months, with several exceptions. Generally
speaking, a report must be made when an
individual knows or has reasonable cause to
believe or suspect that a child has been
subjected to abuse or neglect. These standards
guide mandatory reporters in deciding whether to
make a report to child protective services. A
monitor is a mandated reporter.
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References U.S. Department of Health Human
Services, Administration for Children and
Families, Administration on Children, Youth and
Families, Childrens Bureau. (2020). Child
Maltreatment 2018. https//www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/d
efault/files/cb/cm2018.pdfpage21  National
Assosiation of Social Workers (2019) NASW
Standards for Social Work Practice in Child
Welfare https//www.socialworkers.org/LinkClick.as
px?fileticket_FIu_UDcEac3dportalid0 For
more details Child Custody and Visitation in Los
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